


afraid of heights

by ORiley42



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, Feels, First Kiss, Fluff and Humor, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e09 The Trap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:24:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23354608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ORiley42/pseuds/ORiley42
Summary: "The Trap" episode tag where they kiss like they were meant to, goddammit
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 18
Kudos: 196





	afraid of heights

**Author's Note:**

> I rewatched That Scene from “The Trap” the other day and was positively overcome with feels…and thus, this lil fic was born.  
> I haven't written SPN fic in like, half a decade, so the voices were a little rusty - hope I hit the mark anyway!
> 
> [title from the eponymous Espen Lind song]

“Okay, Cas, I need to say something—”

“You don’t have to,” Cas stopped him with soft words and a softer smile. “I heard your prayer.”

“Oh. That’s…” Dean’s throat worked, thoughts and feelings a toxic spill, like Purgatory’s decrepit air burning him from the inside out. There was more to say and if he didn’t say it now—

“We should go.” Cas’ hand brushed his shoulder, guiding him towards the glowing thread of light, towards home. Dean followed, an unfathomable reluctance in each heavy boot tread. He couldn’t say it out there, without the piercing honesty this evil nowhere clawed out of him.

But the light swallowed him whole as soon as he got near, and now he and Cas were standing back in the bunker, soft amber lighting the edges of Cas’ filthy coat as if trying to mimic the divine glow he’d lost so many years ago. That loss Dean had contributed to, that grace, contaminated.

Reality was back. What a bitch.

Dean took a second to expel the last foul traces of Purgatory from his lungs.

_I wish we had more time_ , he thought.

“More time for what?” Cas asked, as if Dean had spoken aloud.

“Christ,” Dean started, hand wrapping around the time-worn pearl handle of his .45—instinct, fight back against the intrusion. “You listening to my thoughts now?”

“I can only hear your prayers.”

Dean didn’t relax. “I didn’t mean to—to pray that, or whatever.”

“But evidently, you did.”

Dean slumped, a marionette whose strings God had seen fit to slash. Maybe that’s not all God had done. It was easier to forget the son of bitch’s interfering tendencies in that other, darker dimension—God didn’t need to fuck with them there, the place was built to turn you inside out and upside down all on its own.

“It was just…there was something I wanted to say,” Dean flapped his hand towards the nondescript brick wall behind them, not a molecule changed from its arch-angelic path to hell-adjacency. “Back there.”

Cas squinted in that way of his, that motion that would’ve been a full head-tilt just a few years previously. Spoonfuls of humanity, mimicry, picked up to smooth his way—no more lost little bird.

“What was it?”

Dean huffed a laugh, finally shucking his duffle. “It was stupid.”

“There’s nothing here to stop you from saying something stupid. Speaking historically.”

Dean paused, half-turned back on his heel. “Hurtful, dude.”

“Just honest…dude.” Cas tried the appellation out, mouth flinching into a distasteful moue.

Dean matched the look of mild horror. “Don’t call me dude. Like, ever.”

“Noted.” Cas redoubled his squint and took a sudden step forward into Dean’s space without warning. “Now, proceed with the stupidity.”

“Fuck off,” Dean immediately parried.

It glanced off of Cas like a summer breeze. “I’d rather not. And as you pointed out, time is of the essence, so I suggest you speak your mind.”

“I can’t,” Dean gritted his teeth. Surely, this wasn’t happening. The world coming down around their ears for the fuck-knows time, curtesy of the all-mighty himself, and Cas was choosing _now_ to press on this bruise? Holy nail digging into the skin, all that scuffed-up grace and left-over self-righteousness so close to the surface.

“Why?” Cas demanded, imperious, like the old days.

Unlike the old days, Dean wanted to answer. Why couldn’t he answer? “I _can’t_. I left the words…back there.”

“That’s physically impossible.”

Dean’s sigh was so deep it scraped the floor. “I didn’t mean _literally_.”

Cas screwed his mouth up in irritation, and for a moment, Dean thought his old stand-by (if you can’t beat ‘em, piss ‘em off until they can’t stand to be around you) had worked its magic.

But Cas stood his ground. “Dean. You’re making even less sense than usual, and I generally only absorb about forty percent of what you’re saying.”

“That’s—wait, forty percent? Are you kidding me?”

Cas counted off on a hand, “I tune out all the off-color jokes, references to sporting events, and bitching related to topics such as food, sleep, Sam, or your conspiracy regarding diner booth fabric moguls.”

“Hey! That is not a conspiracy, I am a _connoisseur_ of diner booths and—fuck, no, that’s not what we’re talking about.”

“Indeed. You were doing your best _not_ to talk about something.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Dean pointed out, feeling like he was trapped in a sitcom that was itself trapped inside an absurdist horror flick—Stephen King’s _Friends_ or maybe Norman Lear’s _The Shining_. A mise en abyme of insanity and stones left unturned for too goddamn long.

“We don’t, which is why you must overpower your stubborn nature. Dean,” Cas’ gaze was like a brand on Dean’s skin, he had to move away. But Cas didn’t let him. “Don’t you understand? You’ve blocked out the words, but I can _feel_ the force of the prayer you can’t say. You have to _tell_ me. I can’t read your mind. I already have to work hard to understand what you say plainly, what you attempt to communicate obliquely, it’s—well, it’s like that time Sam made us watch a documentary on Renaissance sculpture and you had to look up what continent Italy was in.”

“It’s none of my business what continent Italy’s in! Continents are stupid anyway! And—and why do you keep insulting me?”

“Because at least it gets you talking.”

“I’ll show you talking—"

Dean did not, in point of fact, show Cas ‘talking.’ In actuality, a neutral panel of observers would probably agree that what Dean showed Cas was, technically, kissing. Dean kissed Cas hard, both hands framing his face, eyes closed in determination.

There was a tremor in those hands as he pulled away. Cas’ eyes were wide; they had never closed.

“That’s—that’s what I was trying to say.”

Now, Cas was the one fresh out of words. _Ha_.

“That’s what I wanted to tell you in Purgatory. Now and…and back then, too. The first time.” Dean shuffled his feet, weakly wishing he could shuffle his whole self out the door and away from this verbalizing-feelings-bullshit. “Guess I had trouble putting it into words.”

“Then…” Cas unfroze, rippling back to life like a locomotive with fresh coal in its belly, “I’m glad you decided to bypass words altogether.”

As abruptly as Dean had kissed him the first time, Cas had his hands in Dean’s jacket, dragging him back in. He swallowed Dean’s surprised, “mmph!” greedily.

Dean wouldn’t admit it under pain of death, un-death, or eternal non-death, but he’d always thought Cas’ tough guy act was kinda hot. And when the strong-arming was for erotic rather than angst-driven pursuits? Well, all of Dean’s thoughts on the matter pretty much boiled down to ‘ _hell_ yeah.’

His response to what Cas did next—namely, extricate himself from Dean’s embrace with an unhappy lilt to his recently well-kissed lips—was quite the opposite.

Before Dean could voice his thoughts (“Excuse me, I didn’t give you permission to stop kissing me”) Cas sighed and took another pointed step back. “Apologies. Although I’m flattered that I managed to distract you from your life’s compass for as long as I did—"

“My life’s _what_ —?”

“—your brother does require our assistance.”

“…Oh, shit.”

“In summary,” Cas agreed.

“Sam!”

Cas sighed. “Yes.”

“And Eileen!”

“Indeed.”

Dean kicked the nearest inanimate object. “Fuck!”

“Ask me again later,” Cas patted Dean’s shoulder as he breezed past and out the door.

Dean froze, blinking owlishly.

“Was that…was that a _joke_?” he sputtered, calling after the angel. “Cas!? _Cas!”_

Cas didn’t answer, but Dean could _feel_ him laughing on the way to the war room.

Son of a bitch.

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> Lemme know if this made you feel a feel of any variety ;) <3


End file.
